SIDDHARTHA
GAUTAMA WAS BORN around 567 B.C.E., in a small kingdom
just below the Himalayan foothills. His father was a
chief of the Shakya clan. It is said that twelve years
before his birth the brahmins prophesied that he would
become either a universal monarch or a great sage. To
prevent him from becoming an ascetic, his father kept
him within the confines of the palace. Gautama grew
up in princely luxury, shielded from the outside world,
entertained by dancing girls, instructed by Brahmins,
and trained in archery, swordsmanship, wrestling, swimming,
and running. When he came of age he married Gopa, who
gave birth to a son. He had, as we might say today,
everything.

And
yet, it was not enough. Something—something
as persistent as his own shadow—drew him into
the world beyond the castle walls. There, in the
streets of Kapilavastu, he encountered three simple
things: a sick man, an old man, and a corpse being
carried to the burning grounds. Nothing in his life
of ease had prepared him for this experience, and
when his charioteer told him that all beings are
subject to sickness, old age, and death, he could
not rest. As he returned to the palace, he passed
a wandering ascetic walking peacefully along the
road, wearing the robe and carrying the single bowl
of a sadhu, and he resolved to leave the palace
in search of the answer to the problem of suffering.
He bade his wife and child a silent farewell without
waking them, rode to the edge of the forest where
he cut his long hair with his sword and exchanged
his fine clothes for the simple robes of an ascetic.
With these actions Siddhartha Gautama joined a whole
class of men who had dropped out of Indian society
to find liberation. There were a variety of methods
and teachers, and Gautama investigated many—atheists,
materialists, idealists, and dialecticians. The
deep forest and the teeming marketplace were alive
with the sounds of thousands of arguments and opinions,
and in this it was a time not unlike our own.

Gautama finally settled down to work with two teachers.
From Arada Kalama, who had three hundred disciples,
he learned how to discipline his mind to enter the
sphere of nothingness; but even though Arada Kalama
asked him to remain and teach as an equal, he recognized
that this was not liberation, and left. Next Siddhartha
learned how to enter the concentration of mind which
is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness from
Udraka Ramaputra. But neither was this liberation
and Siddhartha left his second teacher.

The
Buddha Emerging From His Mother's Side,
Third Century Pakistan, Courtesy The Freer Gallery

For
six years Siddhartha along with five companions practiced
austerities and concentration. He drove himself mercilessly,
eating only a single grain of rice a day, pitting
mind against body. His ribs stuck through his wasted
flesh and he seemed more dead than alive. His five
companions left him after he made the decision to
take more substantial food and to abandon asceticism.
Then, Siddhartha entered a village in search of food.
There, a woman named Sujata offered him a dish of
milk and a separate vessel of honey. His strength
returned, Siddhartha washed himself in the Nairanjana
River, and then set off to the Bodhi tree. He spread
a mat of kusha grass underneath, crossed his legs
and sat.

The
Fasting Buddha, Second or Third Century Gandhara,
India, Courtesy Central Museum of Lahore

He
sat, having listened to all the teachers, studied all
the sacred texts and tried all the methods. Now there
was nothing to rely on, no one to turn to, nowhere to
go. He sat solid and unmoving and determined as a mountain,
until finally, after six days, his eye opened on the rising
morning star, so it is said, and he realized that what
he had been looking for had never been lost, neither to
him nor to anyone else. Therefore there was nothing to
attain, and no longer any struggle to attain it.

"Wonder
of wonders," he is reported to have said, "this very enlightenment
is the nature of all beings, and yet they are unhappy
for lack of it." So it was that Siddhartha Gautama woke
up at the age of thirty-five, and became the Buddha, the
Awakened One, known as Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakyas.

For
seven weeks he enjoyed the freedom and tranquility of
liberation. At first he had no inclination to speak about
his realization, which he felt would be too difficult
for most people to understand. But when, according to
legend, Brahma, chief of the three thousand worlds, requested
that the Awakened One teach, since there were those "whose
eyes were only a little clouded over," the Buddha agreed.

Shakyamuni's two former teachers, Udraka and Arada Kalama,
had both died only a few days earlier, and so he sought
the five ascetics who had left him. When they saw him
approaching the Deer Park in Benares they decided to ignore
him, since he had broken his vows. Yet they found something
so radiant about his presence that they rose, prepared
a seat, bathed his feet and listened as the Buddha turned
the wheel of the dharma, the teachings, for the first
time.

The First Noble Truth of the Buddha stated that all life,
all existence, is characterized by duhkha—a
Sanskrit word meaning suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness.
Even moments of happiness have a way of turning into pain
when we hold onto them, or, once they have passed into
memory, they twist the present as the mind makes an inevitable,
hopeless attempt to recreate the past. The teaching of
the Buddha is based on direct insight into the nature
of existence and is a radical critique of wishful thinking
and the myriad tactics of escapism—whether through
political utopianism, psychological therapeutics, simple
hedonism, or (and it is this which primarily distinguishes
Buddhism from most of the world's religions) the theistic
salvation of mysticism. Duhkha is Noble, and it is true.
It is a foundation, a stepping stone, to be comprehended
fully, not to be escaped from or explained. The experience
of duhkha, of the working of one's mind, leads to the
Second Noble Truth, the origin of suffering, traditionally
described as craving, thirsting for pleasure, but also
and more fundamentally a thirst for continued existence,
as well as nonexistence. Examination of the nature of
this thirst leads to the heart of the Second Noble Truth,
the idea of the "self," or "I," with all its desires,
hopes, and fears, and it is only when this self is comprehended
and seen to be insubstantial that the Third Noble Truth,
the cessation of suffering, is realized.

The
Buddha Greeting His Former Companions, Eighth Century
Carving from Java

The
five ascetics who listened to the Buddha's first discourse
in the Deer Park became the nucleus of a community, a
sangha, of men (women were to enter later) who
followed the way the Buddha had described in his Fourth
Noble Truth, the Noble Eightfold Path. These bhikshus,
or monks, lived simply, owning a bowl, a robe, a needle,
a water strainer, and a razor, since they shaved their
heads as a sign of having left home. They traveled around
northeastern India, practicing meditation alone or in
small groups, begging for their meals.

The Buddha's teaching, however, was not only for the monastic
community. Shakyamuni had instructed them to bring it
to all: "Go ye, O bhikshus, for the gain of the many,
the welfare of the many, in compassion for the world,
for the good, for the gain, for the welfare of gods and
men."

For the next forty-nine years Shakyamuni walked through
the villages and towns of India, speaking in the vernacular,
using common figures of speech that everyone could understand.
He taught a villager to practice mindfulness while drawing
water from a well, and when a distraught mother asked
him to heal the dead child she carried in her arms, he
did not perform a miracle, but instead instructed her
to bring him a mustard seed from a house where no one
had ever died. She returned from her search without the
seed, but with the knowledge that death is universal.

As the Buddha's fame spread, kings and other wealthy patrons
donated parks and gardens for retreats. The Buddha accepted
these, but he continued to live as he had ever since his
twenty-ninth year: as a wandering sadhu, begging his own
meal, spending his days in meditation. Only now there
was one difference. Almost every day, after his noon meal,
the Buddha taught. None of these discourses, or the questions
and answers that followed, were recorded during the Buddha's
lifetime.

The
Death of the Buddha, 6th Century rock carving from
Ajanta, India

The
Buddha died in the town of Kushinagara, at the age of
eighty, having eaten a meal of pork or mushrooms. Some
of the assembled monks were despondent, but the Buddha,
lying on his side, with his head resting on his right
hand, reminded them that everything is impermanent, and
advised them to take refuge in themselves and the dharma—the
teaching. He asked for questions a last time. There were
none. Then he spoke his final words: "Now then, bhikshus,
I address you: all compound things are subject to decay;
strive diligently."

The first rainy season after the Buddha's parinirvana,
it is said that five hundred elders gathered at a mountain
cave near Rajagriha, where they held the First Council.
Ananda, who had been the Buddha's attendant, repeated
all the discourses, or sutras, he had heard, and
Upali recited the two hundred fifty monastic rules, the
Vinaya, while Mahakashyapa recited the Abhidharma,
the compendium of Buddhist psychology and metaphysics.
These three collections, which were written on palm leaves
a few centuries later and known as the Tripitaka (literally
"three baskets"), became the basis for all subsequent
versions of the Buddhist canon.

Rick Fields was a Contributing Editor to Tricycle
and an editor of Yoga Journal. His other books
include The Code of the Warrior (HarperCollins)
and Instructions to the Cook (with Bernard Glassman,
Bell Tower). "Who Was the Buddha?" is adapted from How
the Swans Came to the Lake (Shambhala). Rick passed
away in 1999.